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rumpenstiltzkin - Thanks! That CHoW will remain tragically unfinished. Or, uh, maybe I will finish it, but not for the deadline?

Okay, so, I'm not sure if I should actually try to explain what this is. I'll just say it's stupid stuff from a D&D campaign again, and... if you feed a bunch of potions to a rat at random, you're gonna have a bad time.

shockowaffel - Thanks, you're right about the chin. Need to work harder on headsssss.

So as merl1n pointed out a couple of days ago, I don't do nearly enough work from life. I spent the afternoon doing a self-portrait, and boy did I struggle with it, which is a sure sign I need to do more of these.

BONUS ROUND: I dug out the LAST time I did a digital self-portrait from life (did a few since, but they were all traditional media) SEVEN YEARS AGO. It was for my art school entry portfolio. These sorts of things always leave me with really, really mixed feelings - on one hand, I've come a really long way. On the other hand, I really should have come much, much further in seven freaking years. Ah well, never too late.

I love that awesome mutant rat Dyou got a name for that?). It looks like it bites XD.

The self portrait really looks good and that is a lot of improvements over the years.

I have noticed for your studies you usually use the soft brushes , the lighting and volumes look good and you nail the mood . But I think it might helps if you define the shapes and outlines with a more hard brush . It might be your stylistic choice though. Just saying anyways
oh and lovely gestures as always.

sin eater - You might be right about the hard edges. I feel like my stuff used to be - and sometimes still is, in the final pieces - very stiff and sort of lifeless, so I've been trying to loosen up. But if I'm starting to lose the forms, maybe I'm going to far in the other direction? I WILL PAY ATTENTION TO THIS. (The mutant rat is named... Mr Barleykins or something? I did not name it. It does, in fact, bite, and seems to be developing a taste for human blood. As it's from D&D, it may show up with even more mutations if that kid keeps feeding it potions and we don't feed it to the baby perytons first.)

Been doodling heads all evening and generally just being frustrated; this is the only one I like enough to post. It seems that in the end I always default to tomboyish elfheads.

Nice gesture studies, too. Not often you see just clean contours for gestures.

They really subtly capture the poses. Maybe for fun, try making the gestures really extreme, and really exaggerate the curve of the spine, the offset of the shoulders vs. hips, etc. A little less realism, a little more cartoony. Work out some strong silhouettes. Could lead to some interesting results.

rumpenstiltzkin - Thanks, they're all digital! Now I've found a digital setup I like, it wastes less paper. And honestly, when I do do them traditionally (which I occasionally do but rarely scan) they tend to look very similar because most of my RL sketching is in ballpoint pen these days.

Doooodling. File this under "I don't like the result but I had fun doing it".

It's (sort of) Silchas Ruin from the Malazan series. Just finished Dust of Dreams! When I'm done Crippled God I will probably draw a LOT OF FANART; I've been holding off because I'm a little iffy on some characters' appearances and I'm afraid of running into spoilers if I google them. D:

jablar - You are 110% correct, see previous comments re: eyes and how I hate them. Thanks for the comment!

Just a handful of 45s Drawing Script poses today. Very few, really. A lot of times when I don't start drawing for the day 'til like 3 AM, it's entirely my own fault, but occasionally I legitimately don't get the chance until just before bedtime. Today was one of those days! It has been a very long day and I am falling asleep at my keyboard.

Wonderful studies! I really liked seeing the self-portrait side by side, great improvement. The only crit I can really give is that you might want to try and vary up your faces a bit more, they tend towards the pointy-nosed, sharp-jawed type. I think we all have this personal idea of what "beautiful" is and design according to that, which can have us retreading the same ground without thinking about it.

CKLamb - Thanks! Yeah, not nearly enough face variation... less because of what I think looks good (I love, for example, drawing big beaky noses, and yet never seem to?), and more because I'm still trying to figure out facial structure, so it tends to default to very basic structures. I'll work on it!

Cross_Faith - Thank you!

Photo study, a couple of hours. I've been wanting to do a study from this photo for ages, and for the stupidest reason - I love that big streak of reflected light on his face. That's seriously why.

Had fun with the drapery here, almost wishing I hadn't cropped it now.

I keep complaining about eyes, lately. Time to do something about it! I've grabbed a whole bunch of eye crops off The Big Picture and In Focus and I'll probably be doing these for the next couple of days. (I'm always iffy about using non-stock for studies when it's people, but a) these are really small crops, and b) photojournalism is a way better place to find different ages/races/etc than Deviantart stock, my usual go-to.)

As testament to how much I'm struggling with eyes - I've been posting lots of screencap studies and the like, whole colour scenes done in 40 or 50 minutes. These tiny greyscale studies were like 15-20 minutes each. =|